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If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

O. Henry

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O. Henry
Age: 47 †
Born: 1862
Born: September 11
Died: 1910
Died: June 5
Journalist
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
William Sydney Porter
Olivier Henry
Oliver Henry
Public
Forget
Story
Write
Stories
Writing
Never
Pleases
Please

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Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.
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Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.
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In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.
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Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.
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Beauty is Nature in perfection circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the round of drinks.
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A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
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History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
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Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.
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Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.
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When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.
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She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
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What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?
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No friendship is an accident.
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Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.
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I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.
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It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.
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There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
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There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.
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Write what you like there is no other rule.
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A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
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